Who Needs Therapy When You Have Villains?

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the process of writing and how diverse of an experience it can be. I split my time equally (on a good day) between fiction and freelance journalism. While I enjoy and benefit from both types of writing, fiction seems uniquely suited to encourage and facilitate personal growth. Non-fiction, even personal essays, are grounded in reality. They are meticulously researched, considered, and logical observations about the way the world works. Essentially, they are firmly rooted in the present and learning from the past.

Fiction, on the other hand, is not bound by time and space. It presents an opportunity to imagine a world, or even just a single person, exactly the way you want them to be. Conceiving of a novel is not dissimilar to bringing a new life into the world: it begins with basic building blocks of history and reality, but soon it takes on a life of its own.

One question I’m asked a lot as a novelist is how much of myself gets written into the characters I write. And the real answer is decidedly unsatisfying: every character I write is a piece of me that doesn’t exist anywhere outside the page, or sometimes even outside that particular moment.

Unlike when I write essays or researched articles, fiction does not confine me to reality. In those quiet moments late at night or early in…